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It’s a double whammy of new cover art today! Scott Westerfeld has revealed the cover of the third book in his Leviathan trilogy today!

I absolutely love this series, but I have to say I don’t love the style of the new covers. (The new covers being the style Behemoth and Goliath have been done in, with the pseudo-photographic artwork.) For one thing, it’s just not as pretty as the original Leviathan cover. They also feel a little bit too young for me – the original Leviathan cover was great because it had widespread appeal, and lots of adults who were into steampunk picked it up in the bookstore. The new covers read much more “this is a kids’ book” and are just not my thing.

But on the bright side, we still have Keith Thompson’s amazing illustrations inside, and Scott gave us a preview of one illustration from the book. Check it out under the cut.

The second book is Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan trilogy does not disappoint. Behemoth is one of the releases I was most excited for this year, and it completely exceeded my expectations.

In Leviathan, we were introduced to an alternate WWI era, full of fantastic air beasties and mammoth mechanical walkers. Behemoth takes us to Istanbul (called Constantinople by the British), where we’re introduced to entirely new wonders. Istanbul is full of giant machines designed to look like elephants, which is kind of a brilliant mash-up of the Clanker and Darwinist ideologies: they take the power of the Germans’ machines but are still very connected to the natural world. And one of the Istanbul natives we meet is shocked by the way the Darwinists refer to their beasties as “it” rather than “he” or “she”. Each of the different ethnic neighborhoods of the city also have their own walkers, which they call golems and are designed to look like mythical creatures or characters.